Toyota Dealers Installing 50,000 Pedal Reinforcements a Day
Toyota dealers are moving at full capacity, Carter said, with some service bays staying open 24 hours a day. Across the country, the automaker’s dealers are installing pedal reinforcements at a rate of 50,000 a day, Carter said. With 2.3 million cars across eight models recalled, at the current pace it would take a little less than a month and a half for Toyota to complete the recall.
A typical dealership has a half-dozen or more service bays, and Toyota says the retrofit takes about 30 minutes per car. There are some 1,230 Toyota dealerships across the country. One fellow journalist showed me a cell phone picture he took of the service lanes at a California Toyota dealership near his house. It’s jam-packed with cars, he said, and his photo proved it.
“Is [the dealership recall process] at 100 percent capacity?” Toyota spokesman Greg Thome said. “I guess not, in the sense that every dealer is not 24/7. … But to say they’re not doing 24/7 isn’t to say they’re not doing everything for their customers.”
Still, additional recalls — from the existing floormat entrapment recall to Tuesday’s brake software update for the Prius and Lexus HS 250h hybrids — are sure to squeeze the service capacity.
